Lois Leveen
“Don’t you fucking dare!”
Julie did not say these words to me, although in a ways she said them about me. And the person she said them to ignored her — which as we all know was a very hard thing to do. But this was someone who was practiced at such feats as occasionally disobeying Julie Mancini. As astounding as such defiance might seem, I am glad this person did dare do it. But more on that anon.
I moved to Portland in 2000, not entirely late to the party, although my first inkling of Literary Arts was when Carrie Hoops was running the show. In other words, Julie Mancini was already legendary, someone I heard about for years before I ever laid eyes on her. Fittingly, that happened when she was on stage, at an event celebrating Literary Arts’ anniversary (25th maybe?), and she captured my heart with her wit, her wisdom, and her very many F-bombs. When you are originally from New Fucking York and you arrive in Old Portland, you are always looking for a fellow potty-mouth. It wasn’t long afterwards that we met properly, a meeting that involved her work at Mercy Corps, a furry wall, and my wearing a furry faux-leopard sweater. Sealed in each other’s hearts, we enjoyed numerous cuss-filled lunches thereafter; we usually only had to reschedule each date two or three times due to “some goddamn thing” or other that erupted on Julie’s calendar. There were also the delightful times when, at some dull reception, I’d catch sight of Julie across the room holding a wineglass full of diet coke, and know if I could just get through the crowd to stand next to her, this dud of an event would end up delightful.
(For all her trademark obscenities and irreverence, Julie could also be unflinchingly earnest, particularly when she went to work for College Possible. She was awed by the students they served, and she simply couldn’t believe the world wasn’t giving kids like that all they deserved, and she was utterly committed to fixing that.)
More than a decade ago, after much wrangling of schedules, I managed to host Julie and Dennis at my house for dinner, along with Paul and Nancy Bragdon. Although I don’t remember too many details of the evening itself, looking back at the email chain in which we made the arrangements, I am pleased to report Julie managed to call Nancy “so full of shit” as we tried to find a date that worked for everyone. Not long after I hosted this dinner, Dennis emailed me several photos of small art pieces he’d made out of oak galls, asking which one I wanted. This, apparently, was a regular MO . . . out for a social event at someone’s home, Dennis would eyeball the walls to see if they needed just a touch of gall. It had become a regular enough occurrence that Julie told me she had taken to saying “Don’t you fucking dare!” on the drive home from an evening out, meaning to save some poor soul the dreaded Dennis art offer. This is perhaps the thing I could least understand about Julie, because art made out of insect remnants is surprisingly up my alley, so I was delighted to be gifted one of Dennis’s pieces. More delighted than ever when, in the midst of the worst of the pandemic, the poem-a-day email from the Academy of American Poets contained "Oak Gall Wasp,” a long, weird, lovely poem by Robyn Schiff, giving me an excuse to forward it to Julie and Dennis, and catch up a little over email in that horrid no-lunch-or-reception-or-dinner-party-possible pandemic way.
Of course, I thought of and always will think of Julie and Dennis every time I set eyes on this piece hanging on my wall. Mortifying as it was to Julie that Dennis foisted such things on their friends, I am glad to have this bit of beauty as a visual token of the two of them, and a daily reminder of just how much we can and should fucking dare to do in this world.